DHS Funds Installation of White Boxes That Can Track Population of Entire City

[bsteadman]

DHS Funds Installation of White Boxes That Can Track Population of Entire City

Federal agency, police refuse to explain mesh network planned for “citywide deployment” in Seattle

Infowars.com
Paul Joseph Watson
11/12/2013

Excerpt:

Strange new off-white boxes popping up in downtown Seattle use wi-fi networks that can record the last 1,000 locations of a person using their cellphone’s MAC address, but the Department of Homeland Security – which funded the network to the tune of $2.7 million dollars – has refused to address the nightmare privacy implications of a system that could lead to the permanent tracking of an entire city’s population.

A report by The Stranger, a weekly Seattle newspaper, exposes how the boxes, which are attached to utility poles and include vertical antennae, can track cellphones even if they are not connected to the system’s wi-fi network.

Aruba – the company that provided the boxes to the Seattle Police Department – brags in its technical literature about how the boxes can keep track of “rogue” or “unassociated” devices, in other words your cellphone even if you have refused to let the system access your device’s wi-fi component.

The user’s guide for one of Aruba’s recent software products states: “The wireless network has a wealth of information about unassociated and associated devices.” That software includes “a location engine that calculates associated and unassociated device location every 30 seconds by default… The last 1,000 historical locations are stored for each MAC address.”

When reporters Matt Fikse-Verkerk and Brendan Kiley asked the Seattle Police Department and the Department of Homeland Security to explain what the boxes were for, the DHS refused to comment and Seattle Police detective Monty Moss would only state that the department “is not comfortable answering policy questions when we do not yet have a policy.”

Detective Moss also added that the mesh network would not be used for “surveillance purposes… without City Council’s approval and the appropriate court authorization.” Note that he didn’t say the mesh network couldn’t be used for the surveillance functions we asked about, only that it wouldn’t—at least until certain people in power say it can. That’s the equivalent of a “trust us” and a handshake.

The justification for the mesh network is that it will allow police, firefighters and other first responders to communicate as well as stream surveillance video on a private uncluttered network during an emergency.

However, the system is, “adept at seeing all the devices that move through their coverage area and visually mapping the locations of those devices in real time for the system administrators’ convenience.” The SPD has also indicated that it plans “citywide deployment” of the network, opening the door for mass unfettered surveillance of Seattle’s 634,000 residents.
...............................................

View the complete article, including video, at:

http://www.infowars.com/dhs-funds-in...f-entire-city/

[bsteadman]

Seattle police deactivate surveillance system after public outrage

RT
11/13/2013

Excerpt:

Police in Seattle, Washington have responded to a major public outcry by disabling a recently discovered law enforcement tool that critics said could be used to conduct sweeping surveillance across the city.

Last week, Seattle’s The Stranger published an in-depth look at a little known new initiative taking place within the city that involved the installation of dozens of devices that would create a digital mesh network for law enforcement officers. The devices — small white-boxes equipped with antennas and adorned on utility poles — would broadcast data wirelessly between nodes so police officers could have their own private network to more easily share large amounts of data. As The Stranger pointed out, however, those same contraptions were able to collect data on internet-ready devices of anyone within reach, essentially allowing the Seattle Police Department to see where cell phones, laptops and any other smart devices operating within reach were located.

The SPD said they had no bad intentions with installing the mesh network, but The Stranger article and the subsequent media coverage it spawned quickly caused the system to receive the type of attention that wasn’t very welcomed. Now only days after citizens began calling for the dismantling of the mesh network, The Stranger has confirmed that the SPD are disabling the devices until a proper policy could be adopted by the city.

"The wireless mesh network will be deactivated until city council approves a draft policy and until there's an opportunity forvigorous public debate," Police Chief Jim Pugel told The Stranger for an article published late Tuesday.

"Our position is that the technology is the technology," Whitcomb said, "but we want to make sure that we have safeguards and policies in place so people with legitimate privacy concerns aren't worried about how it's being used."

The SPD told The Stranger previously that the system was not being used, but anyone with a smart phone who wandered through the jurisdiction covered by the digital nodes could still notice that their devices were being discovered by the internet-broadcasting boxes, just as a person’s iPhone or Android might attempt to connect to any network within reach. In theory, law enforcement could take the personal information transmitted as the two devices talk to each other and use that intelligence to triangulate the location of a person, even within inches.

When the SPD was approached about the system last week, they insisted that it wasn’t even in operation yet. David Ham of Seattle’s KIRO-7 News asked, however, how come “we could see these network names if it’s not being used?”

“Well, they couldn’t give us an explanation,” Ham said at the time.

“They now own a piece of equipment that has tracking capabilities so we think that they should be going to city council and presenting a protocol for the whole network that says they won’t be using it for surveillance purposes,” Jamela Debelak of the American Civil Liberties Union told the network.

Now just days later, the SPD has admitted to The Stranger that indeed the mesh network was turned on — it just wasn’t supposed to be.
.......................................

View the complete article at:

http://rt.com/usa/seattle-mesh-network-disabled-676/